UPDATED: At least one of 7 guns found in Lyndeborough pond was stolen

By NANCY BEAN FOSTERUnion Leader Correspondent

LYNDEBOROUGH — Seven guns fished out of a fire pond Tuesday morning may be part of a stolen gun collection.

Lt. Rainsford Deware, officer-in-charge of the Lyndeborough Police Department, said the weapons were spotted by resident Beth Penny, who was out walking near the shallow pool Monday with her dog and 2-year-old son. As she got closer to the water, Penny counted three guns.

She told her neighbor, Paul Turner, who owns the pond and the adjacent farm. Turner contacted Deware early Tuesday. “One of the guns was reported stolen out of a storage unit in Peterborough,” said Deware, who said the guns range in age from relatively new to antique.

Deware said when he arrived he could see four weapons — all long arms – muzzle-down in the water. He called Road Agent Kent Perry, who brought a small boat to the scene. As Perry pulled the weapons out of the water and carried them to shore, Deware set to work scraping and cleaning off the muck to get their serial numbers.

“The way they were positioned, it looks like somebody threw them like spears into the pond,” Perry said. “And I’m guessing they’ve only been there since the fall because this place is full of weeds in the summer and these don’t have any weeds on them.”

Deware ran the serial numbers and came up with the gun stolen from the Peterborough storage unit. After speaking with Peterborough police, Deware learned that the owner of the gun had reported several weapons stolen, but didn’t have the serial numbers for all of them.

Deware said he’s hoping the owner of the gun with the matching serial number can identify the rest of the weapons. From there the investigation will focus on how the weapons ended up in a pond off the beaten path in Lyndeborough, he said.